m work, from enjoyment, and from
the experience of good and ill. Abstention from wine, meat, other
luxuries of food and drink, and from women gives power which is magical,
because it has no real causal connection with desired results in war or
industry. Uncivilized people almost always have some such notion of
reaching a higher plane of power, or more especially of luck, by
self-discipline. Acts of self-discipline, e.g. fasting, gashing,
mutilating one's self, also enter into mourning. In some tribes parents
who expect a child engage in acts of the same kind.[2150] Asceticism in
higher civilization is a survival of the life philosophy of an earlier
stage, in which the pain of men was believed to be pleasant to the
superior powers. The same sentiment revives now in times of decline or
calamity, when the wrath of God is recognized or apprehended. We appoint
a fast when we are face to face with calamity. The same sentiment is at
work in sects and individuals when they desire "holiness," or a "higher
life," or mystic communion with higher powers, or "purity" (in the
ritual sense), or relief from "sin," or escape from the terror of ghosts
and demons, or power to arise to some high moral standard by crushing
out the natural appetites which according to that standard are base and
wicked.

+675. Asceticism in Japan.+ The Shinto religion of the Japanese "is not
an essentially ascetic religion; it offers flesh and wine to its gods;
and it prescribes only such forms of self-denial as ancient custom and
decency require. Nevertheless, some of its votaries perform
extraordinary austerities on special occasions,--austerities which
always include much cold-water bathing. But the most curious phase of
this Shinto ascetism is represented by a custom still prevalent in
remote districts. According to this custom a community yearly appoints
one of its citizens to devote himself wholly to the gods on behalf of
the rest. During the term of his consecration this communal
representative must separate from his family, must not approach women,
must avoid all places of amusement, must eat only food cooked with
sacred fire, must abstain from wine, must bathe in fresh cold water
several times a day, must repeat particular prayers at certain hours,
and must keep vigil upon certain nights. When he has performed these
duties of abstinence and purification for the specified time he becomes
religiously free, and another man is then elected to take his pl